UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres called on Wednesday for a “windfall” tax on the profits of fossil fuel companies to help pay for the fight against global warming, calling them the “godfathers of climate chaos”.
“We cannot accept a future where the rich are protected in air-conditioned bubbles, while the rest of humanity is lashed by lethal weather in unliveable lands,” Mr Guterres said. There is an 80 percent likelihood that the annual average global temperature will temporarily exceed 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels for at least one of the next five years, according to a new report from the World Meteorological Organization (It also estimated that there is nearly a one in two chance – 47% – that the average global temperatures over that entire five-year span could top 1.5C, an increase from just under a one-in-three chance projected for the 2023-2027 span.
Mr Guterres spoke from the American Museum of Natural History in New York in a bid to revive focus on climate change at a time when many national elections, and conflict in places like Ukraine, Gaza and Sudan this year have seized much of the international spotlight. Mr Guterres said that global emissions of carbon dioxide must fall 9% each year to 2030 for the 1.5C target under the Paris climate accords to be kept alive.“We are playing Russian roulette with the planet. We need an exit ramp off the highway to climate hell,” Mr Guterres said, adding: “The truth is, we have control of the wheel.”